Defeat of the Bandersnatch
by Mylos
Summary: On mission, while camped in the woods, Aramis returns to a behavior Athos and Porthos thought he was done with. They figure things could turn out all right, just so long as they can keep him from stabbing anyone, himself included. 4/4
1. Chapter 1

Written for this lovely prompt:

_Maybe we already had this, but I want more sleepwalking Aramis._

_Bonus for:_

_\- Porthos putting on a brave face but secretly fretting that someone will wake Aramis up when he's wandering around which, as everyone "knows", could mess a man up in the head_

_\- Someone suggesting - jokingly or not - that they tie a string to Aramis (attaching the other end to one of them) while they camp in the forest so that he won't wander off and get lost_

_\- Aramis "working" in his sleep; mending coats or cooking (if they're on the road with a camp fire going). Gold star for him being a better cook when he's asleep than he is awake._

Obviously I did not get all the elements in (at least not in the way requested by the prompter) but when I put the prompt into my brain with my muse and shook it, this is what came out. Also, I get no gold stars - no cooking happens, asleep or awake, by anyone. Which is a little sad. And, if anyone does know of any other stories with sleepwalking Aramis, please point me in their direction.

* * *

_**Defeat of the Bandersnatch**_

* * *

Athos woke blearily, some noise or sound swishing through his ears and putting his teeth on edge. Cautiously, he lifted his head from the folded saddle blanket serving as his pillow and glanced around.

"Shh," hummed Porthos softly, sitting tensely on the balls of his feet with his back pressed to one of the oak trees they'd camped beneath. When their eyes met, he lifted a finger to his stiff lips and repeated the sound. "Shh."

Sitting up completely, Athos groped for his dagger, blinking his eyes as he stared into the dark. "What's going on?" he whispered, finding his boots and getting his feet underneath him.

Dragging a deep breath that somehow made him seem absurdly frightened, Porthos pointed. A few steps beyond where d'Artagnan lay sleeping, Aramis was standing amidst the birch trees, twisting in silent maneuvers with his sword - his parrying dagger clutched tightly in his other hand so that the baleful moonlight glinted silently off both blades as he turned.

"He's asleep," said Porthos.

Athos felt his insides warble and breathed tightly out through his nose. He held his breath as Aramis spun again, executing a thrust and block. "I thought we were past this. He hasn't had an episode in years."

Suddenly, d'Artagnan rolled to face them. "He's done this before?" he whispered.

"How long have you been awake?" asked Athos.

"Longer than you. I didn't drink half the wine last night."

"Cheeky," replied Athos without breaking expression.

D'Artagnan smiled and sat up higher, but his eyes were worried, glancing from Porthos to Aramis and back again. "He's done this before?" he repeated.

"Once or twice," mumbled Athos, watching Aramis round a tree and sweep his sword in an arch, silent and graceful, and terribly asleep.

"Bit more than that," countered Porthos. "For a while, Athos used to make him sleep with a string tied around his wrist while he tied the other end around his own, just to keep track of him if he tried to wander off."

D'Artagnan's eyebrows lifted.

Athos shrugged. Following onto the path of Porthos's blunt honesty, he kept his voice low. "Sword practice is not all he would get up to. Occasionally we'd find he'd repaired all our shirts during the night, and if it was just that, we may not have minded, but more than once we found he'd wandered beyond an hours' walk away from us, and in bare feet besides. The string seemed the most logical solution."

The sudden memory jolted him and caused his eyes to hone back in on Aramis, fixing in on whether or not he had his boots on, and then biting back a curse when he realized that he didn't. Undressed feet skimming over stones and sticks, collecting bruises and abrasions without thought.

"And if we try to wake him up..." d'Artagnan began hesitantly. "Are we... are we afraid he'll go batty?"

"I'm more afraid he'll skewer one of us alive," growled Porthos softly. "Or trip in the process at the surprise and stab himself in the eye."

D'Artagnan grimaced slightly before he twisted his head back to watch as Aramis fought shadows.

Feeling carefully for his own sword, Athos drew it out of his belt and rose from his crouch.

"Athos," Porthos cautioned.

"Talking to him works sometimes."

"Rarely, and even when it does, he never makes sense."

"If he thinks to do battle," Athos replied calmly. "There is no reason he should do it alone."

Bracing himself, Porthos slid up the tree until he was standing with the trunk still at his back, watching grimly as Athos strode past him.

* * *

**tbc**

* * *

Additional note for those who are unfamiliar with it: "Bandersnatch" is taken from the poem "The Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, more elements of which are likely to find purchase in this story before I finish it.

* * *

If you love it, let it show! :)


	2. Chapter 2

I know I've been gone forever, but—yay! Part two!

Recognizable phrases are credited to Lewis Carroll, with a shout out to Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, scene 1). The stylistic device used in the mischmacsh of this fic I will credit to Carroll also. Though this nonsense style was not his invention, the nonsense in this story is emulative of his approach.

* * *

**_Defeat of the Bandersnatch_  
**

* * *

Into the midst of the moon-brightened birch trees, Athos stepped quietly. Silently. Vigilant in the disturbance of the brittle sticks and leaves laid out before his toes.

Nearer the source of battle, the whisper of Aramis's swordplay took upon itself a new shape, becoming somehow less defined. A myopic consequence complicated further by the way the tangled branches above them swayed. Bending the shadows. Playing tricks with the diluted light as it glanced off old, white tree bark to slither across Aramis's sword and then banish it again to darkness.

Back by the oak, d'Artagnan's voice grumbled indecipherably while Porthos murmured a worried hiss. Their discontent nudging contrarily against his shoulder blades.

Athos ignored them both and blinked, tracking the rhythm as Aramis worked to and fro between the trunks—disappearing by haves and then appearing again—a desperate shuffling cadence marking the forest through his bare feet. Of comfort, it was a cadence Athos knew by heart. Long years of familiarity speaking reflexively to his bones, even while the darkness gaped and whatever enemy Aramis was fighting remained invisible.

It was calming, the way the fluency oiled his joints. So calming, Athos felt nearly—_nearly_—as if he were engaging a friendly spar in the garrison when he finally rounded a trunk and slid his sword up with Aramis's—letting the blades skim together.

Confronted with contact, Aramis paused. His dark eyes appearing distant and confused as a glint of moonlight lingered on their surface.

Breathing carefully into the stillness, Athos waited to see what would happen, but the quiet didn't last. Forehead creasing, Aramis circled his blade tightly, bringing Athos's closer to his body and then sliding it away. Athos bent with the maneuver easily. Stepping into the parry so that their sleeves touched, easing back with the release, and then sidestepping smoothly to re-catch Aramis's blade. "Are we fighting, Aramis?" he asked softly.

Another pause. A head tilt. The pose gave Aramis an ethereal quality, as though part of him truly stood in another word.

Cautious, Athos held his breath against the tension between their swords while Aramis's frown deepened. "Athos?" he whispered.

"Yes."

"Athos?" Aramis sounded afraid, but the confusion lingered only a moment before his shoulder twitched and their blades darted against each other again. Quick, muted, steel on steel. Fast and in tandem. Clashing and matching until they ran into another pause.

Opaque and frowning, Aramis stared, chest heaving as though to catch his breath.

"I'm here, Aramis," Athos spoke gently. "I asked—are we fighting?"

Aramis's gaze drifted worryingly, scanning into trees. "Yes," he answered tensely.

"Each other?"

Flinching quietly, the corners of Aramis's eyes crumpled even while the pressure between their blades grew taut. Suddenly, Aramis pressed, rounding up with his parrying dagger to separate his sword from Athos's and shove away, spinning his whole body in another direction as though to do battle on another front. Stabbing at ghosts in the shadows.

Quickly, Athos followed, pacing Aramis across the clearing, then pivoting to catch up their swords again. "Aramis?"

"Athos," Aramis repeated desolately, the jump of his working throat visible in the moonlight.

"What is it?"

"_Athos!_"

"I'm here."

Forgoing the search for phantoms and obscurities, Aramis finally looked up. For a moment their gazes locked together so intensely, so vibrantly, it was as if Aramis were awake. But all too soon, he grimaced, head jolting as the rustling trees caught his attention, eyebrows wrinkling pointedly, and it was plain again that he was someplace else.

"Aramis—"

"You shouldn't, Athos," Aramis cut in, rocking his wrist and leaning to the balls of his feet in wary observance of Athos's blade. "Crafe, but not here." His voice lowered seriously. "Dathos—Pathos," he said, and his chin gave a worried jerk. "Bewatch. The krieve."

Latently, Athos felt his muscles settle, even as a tingling rose in his spine.

It was always this—the strange language of Aramis's sleep—that did something to him in ways nothing else associated with Aramis's night wanderings ever quite managed. Enflaming the worry while breathing life into the cold part Athos's chest he hadn't realized could still relish the warmth.

It was the sincerity, perhaps. The open, unguarded confusion.

It ached.

"Bewatch?" Athos prompted thickly.

"Bewatch," Aramis agreed, his expression resolving into something fierce and wary—the look he often took upon himself when sensing imminent attack. "The Bandersnatch will circle from the front. _Catch_ and _shun_ and _sought_."

He moved suddenly and Athos followed, catching Aramis's sword in a low thrust, then squaring his stance to keep them facing each other. "The front?" he pushed.

"Always." Aramis nodded edgily. "Tridous, from the front." Without seeming to notice, Aramis shivered and his blade staggered. His eyes strayed, narrowing with confusion into the trees. "Tridous, and we fremble. Quilent in fuego, we go. _Quilent. Quilent._ But I hear it now."

Athos cleared his throat. "What will circle from the front?"

"The _dast_, Athos!" Aramis insisted, voice suddenly full volume. "The demast! The demast nalled _Bandersnatch_."

Athos swallowed, rolling the nonsense over his tongue. _Quilent in fuego._ _Dast_ and _demast_ and _Bandersnatch_…

Fuego. _Fire._

Bander. _Leader?_

Aramis made a noise. Frustrated. Apprenxious.

Athos's fingers thrummed unsteadily.

"The oscur… the oscur… the warther. The warther!" Sinking into a halting voice, Aramis cocked his head and squinted, the exaggerated way he did when trying to force up a memory while drunk. "Bandersnatch. Bander… claps and gapers." After a moment he huffed as though defeated. With a heavy sigh, he clanged his blade artlessly against Athos's then stepped back in a soft retreat. "Vorpal. Uffish. Don't you hear it?"

Lowering his sword just slightly, Athos watched him and waited, feeling his ears prick despite himself. Tensing and listening as a stray draft soughed through the trees. Wind warbling the innocuous sound into the low and far away holler of some unknown beast…

"I don't hear it," he lied, focusing on the exhaustion in Aramis's muscles and the loose way he held his sword.

"I hear it," Aramis whispered.

Sheathing his parrying dagger slowly, Athos spread his empty fingers and took a cautious forward step. "The warther, you said? What is it? Aramis, I can help if you tell me what it is."

Abruptly Aramis scowled, anger alighting on his features as his blade came up.

Athos stopped, palm out.

"The warther reeds for the Bandersnatch," Aramis said angrily. "For the Bandersnatch, the wath is rended." Snappishly, he lunged, tangling their blades with a force he hadn't previously utilized. "_Pathos!_" he growled. "For Pathos. Dathos. _Athos!_" Then, just as suddenly as he'd attacked, he slunk back, dropping his guard and showing his side to Athos's blade. "For deos. But I…" his voice dipped as it trailed, becoming calm and subdued while Athos's heart still thundered.

"We're soldiers. We're soldiers, Athos—" Aramis shook his head and gestured round about. "In the toves, were we. In the toves we are again." His sword faltered, the hand with his parrying dagger hanging limply at his side, fingers loose. "Sheeted dead. They squeak and gibber. Cloaked—" he blinked, and his face creased, something like grief rising to join the moonlit paleness, "—but I can see them. No lines. No veil. Not for me." He waved his dagger towards the trees. "Not for me."

Athos felt a lump rising in his throat. "Ara—"

"Cruold and gwallow." Aramis took a deep breath, dark and shuddery. Then suddenly, clear as day and staring Athos in the eye— "I did not abandon my post."

"No," agreed Athos, with a sincerity so strong and quick it locked up his lungs. "Of course not. You never would." He took a deep breath to break the cage of his ribs and stepped forward, nodding towards the trees. "The Bandersnatch lies dead, Aramis. Your sword was true. You struck it and it died. Rest now and lower your guard. It is defeated."

Aramis turned wearily, scanning the ground. "Defeated. Dead. Why then does it thriver?"

Athos stared at the ground, the blanket of leaves rustling in a sudden, gentle breeze. A swirl of sound and shape accompanied it, like the death rattle from a company of corpses on a battlefield. His throat closed. "It doesn't… _thriver_," he assured, swallowing in the bale of moonlight and staring as the leaves became dormant and flat. "It doesn't thriver."

"The dast thrivers, Athos," Aramis contradicted tiredly, sounding defeated, sounding like he wanted Athos to stop humoring him. "The demast always thrivers." But his sword lowered, and though his eyes were anguished, he suddenly looked hopeful, like a child. "Is it truly dead? Will it return?"

Abandoning his own sword entirely to the dirt, Athos stepped into his space and clutched him—too tightly probably—hands to his shoulders.

Aramis stared at their boots, then blinked. Releasing his dagger to the same fate as Athos's sword, he cupped his hand to the side of Athos's face, looking him in the eye. "I wish it would stay dead. For you, my brother, I wish it would. You deserve such mercy, above all. I wish I… " Looking down, he breathed, choked. "I wish."

Athos dug his fingers in, wishing that pressure alone would be enough to wake him, to keep him from the demons in his mind, but it never was, not when he was like this.

Abruptly, Aramis drooped. Athos caught him under his arms just in time to keep the descent to their knees gentle. Aramis's forehead slumping shakily onto his shoulder while his lungs shuddered unevenly.

Seized by some absurd and desperate fondness, Athos dug a hand into his hair. Twisting his fingers into the strands while trying to bring his own breathing under control. It hurt, the sudden, sharp ache to his heart. "It's dead," he whispered into Aramis's ear, not sure anymore that he could even be heard. "It's dead."

Closing his eyes, he exhaled slowly, shaking the tremble from his lungs.

When he looked up, Porthos was there. And d'Artagnan. No humor on their faces.

"Aramis," mumbled Athos, keeping his eyes locked with Porthos's as he jostled him. "Aramis?"

Aramis remained limp against him, the smooth flutter of his lungs easing into something disconcertingly even and unaware. Athos cleared his throat. "Let's get him back," he ordered.

"Yeah." Porthos knelt, splaying a hand over the base of Aramis's spine. "Yeah, let's get him back."

Looking artlessly unsettled, d'Artagnan followed.

* * *

**tbc**


	3. Chapter 3

I don't know that it matters but in relation to the themes in this fic, maybe keep in mind that most of it was written with the first series as the backdrop before the second series aired. Also, it was never intended for this to turn out quite as angsty as it did. The angst just keeps happening. Something's wrong with me.

* * *

**_Defeat of the Bandersnatch_**

* * *

Bracing his knees roughly, Athos balanced his stance with Porthos's as they lowered Aramis's slack weight to the bedroll. His muscles burned emptily once they had him down and he lingered, leaving his hand trapped beneath the weight of Aramis's head as they crouched over him.

The heavy lack of awareness lulling Aramis's features felt offensively foreign. The disquiet it carried coiled uffishly around Athos's chest, whispering discontent into his ear, like a ghost. Like an old nightmare awoken into life—or a demon from the past.

_The_ _dast_, Athos mouthed, staring down at Aramis's face. "_The demast." _The words snuck tremulously past his vocal chords. He swallowed thickly before they could breach his lips, and the dark edges of his mind gimbled, letting him taste the bite of evening wine.

_I wish it would stay dead. For you, my brother, I wish it would,_ he heard Aramis say. Time thinned, making him feel strangely porous as he flexed his palm, curling his fingers into Aramis's hair.

"He's… worried about you," mumbled Porthos, near to his ear.

Though the movement remained contained below his skin, Athos jolted and glanced over, surprised and not surprised to find Porthos's gaze in such close proximity.

Porthos watched him, then peered downward to where his hand rested on Aramis's shoulder. "He sounded like… I think he's worried about you," he repeated. "That much, I think I could tell."

_For Pathos, Dathos—Athos_, Aramis had said.

_Don't you hear it?_

Athos gave in to a tiny shiver, glancing away into the dark trees and the nimble thriver of Aramis's beast. The leaves banked across the forest floor turned loosely and lay dead.

"I think all of us, perhaps," Athos said when he looked back, peeling his gaze from the grove of trees. Bracing Aramis's jaw with his other hand, he eased his trapped palm from beneath Aramis's skull, squeezing the base of Aramis's neck gently before loosening contact and sitting back on his heels.

Watching him with eyes moored in caution, Porthos took a soft breath.

The sound drew him. Without conscious thought, Athos reached across the narrow space and tapped his hand to Porthos's shoulder, connecting_—_for a few long seconds_—_his own worn mind to the warm concern of Porthos's muscle. "All of us, I think," he said again, infusing the words with greater solidity. Conversely, he felt a sudden weariness settle through his spine. Closing his eyes, he rubbed his thumb down the bridge of his own nose. "We should have been watching out for this. Too much has occurred these past months, for all of us. We know how he gets. We should have been prepared."

"He hasn't been sleeping well," Porthos conceded, though he continued to look at Athos with wary honesty, alert to the possibility of some deeper worry. A darker meaning. Some missing piece.

_Cruold and gwallow_, Athos thought. _Sheeted dead_. Glancing briefly at the sky, he took in their secluded camp, listening to the timorous quiet despite himself.

There was no attack. No ill-formed enemy. No demons. _Don't you hear it?_

_Tridous, from the front. _

_Tridous, and we fremble._

Athos swallowed, feeling the emotion in his throat like something gone. Like something dead and wanting to be forgotten.

"Is that what brought this on?" D'Artagnan's voice moved into the space guardedly. A grounding bulwark less tainted by demons and darkness, though the worry was there, thick as any. "Restless sleep?"

Athos blinked at him, then back at Porthos, stretching his neck to unsettle the bleak absurdities haunting the air. Feeling for the low hem of Aramis's britches, he kept strangely and conversationally to the truth as he responded. "I always believed it came during those times he'd expended too much energy pretending to be happy through a day."

Porthos grunted. "Or obsessed with some task."

Athos nodded. "After days too long in the saddle_—_times when some of the more minor necessities amongst us would become abandoned for the hour, only to take up residence in Aramis's mind once he'd fallen asleep." He bunched the material of Aramis's clothed leg up past his ankle and accepted the waterskin d'Artagnan held out to him.

"Never were able to define a particular beginning," Porthos concluded, matching Athos's actions in examining Aramis's other foot. "Though I'd thought if we were to see this again, it would have been when Marsac came back. And the duke."

"Is he always so… like _this_, when it's over?" pressed d'Artagnan, folding to his knees near Aramis's feet with the wrappings from Aramis's kit in his hand. "I don't recall ever seeing him so… unaware, before."

"Sometimes," admitted Athos, tracing damp cloth along a long scrape before attending a glance at Aramis's lax face_—_his even breathing and closed eyes. "Don't worry. If he follows pattern, he'll be himself by morning. The _warther_ and the _Bandersnatch_ will barely find his memory."

"I don't like it," d'Artagnan muttered, with such betrayed sincerity Athos nearly laughed.

Porthos did laugh, cracking a genuine smile that eased something in Athos's chest. "I look forward to you telling him so," Porthos said, patting d'Artagnan's knee. "Aramis—he needs reminding sometimes."

"That he does," Athos agreed.

* * *

**tbc**

* * *

The epilog ended up a little longer than planned and I'm too bleary right now to manage a workable final review of it, so it'll go up as a separate chapter tomorrow, I think. In my effort to get things finished, I fear I'm rolling through my edits faster than I ought to anyway, so I apologize if I've missed some typos or if the narrative flow feels more awkward in some places than others.

* * *

As before, any mischmacsh recognizable from "The Jabberwocky" is credited to Lewis Carroll.


	4. Chapter 4

In which the epilog turns out to be the longest chapter. Because apparently that's the way I am.

* * *

_**Defeat of the Bandersnatch: Epilog  
**_

* * *

His first awareness was the sound of late-morning birds, followed by a gentle draft buzzing the warm skin of his toes. Toes that felt heavy to no account. Attached to legs that felt like mastic.

A blurry sensation between his ears fogged his memory, thoughts slinking away from him like pouring sand.

His fingers were the first appendages willing to give in to his request for movement. Fluttering, they curled inward towards his palm before spreading their wakefulness down to his wrist—which lifted and stopped short, catching against some sort of resistance that jolted the rest of his body to attention as sharply as a snapped twig on a quiet battlefield.

Opening his eyes to a blue sky glimpsed through leaved branches, Aramis tensed as a matter of course, tracking his bleary confusion to the rope wrapped around his wrist. And from there, to its anchor—finding the tether looped around Athos's boot as the man lounged nearby with a book in his hands.

Dropping his head to his bedroll, Aramis groaned. "Athos."

"That is what you usually call me."

Conscripting his untied arm into action, Aramis flexed his fingers raggedly and scrubbed his eyes closed, focusing on the shapes and lights slogging behind his eyelids as he increased the pressure. "I could think of other names to use."

Athos huffed, closing his book. "All invoking great esteem, I'm sure."

Eased to hear the warmth under the dryness, Aramis allowed himself a genuine grin, then tugged groggily on the lead capturing his wrist, uncomfortable with the blank space it taunted at in his awareness. "Was this really necessary?"

"Imperative," Athos intoned.

Aramis listened to him moving—heard the diffused sounds of rope being freed from Athos's boot, and felt the slackening tautness on his bound wrist.

"Porthos, of course, favored bets to see if we could get you to make friquassee if we gave you the correct ingredients, and d'Artagnan wanted proof you were capable of darning shirts as finely in sleep as when you are awake. Eventually, we decided this was best."

Aramis grimaced, not opening his eyes until he felt himself under the nearer and more serious scrutiny of Athos's shade.

Even then, he hesitated. He felt altogether heavy. Head and toes and skin. Some weighted thing had turned below his sternum. Cumbersome, and unsettled in such a way that he could not remember how it fit.

Asserting a final mulish dig into his eyelids, he hauled his hand away and blinked the light back in.

Above, though the frame of him was clouded, Athos was frowning. Staring back, Aramis tightened his brow as the expression pulled something from the fog—an image of Athos standing in moonlight, sword poised. _I'm here, Aramis. I asked—are we fighting?_

New words hung forgotten on Aramis's tongue and he swallowed.

"Aramis," Athos prompted as though repeating himself. "Sit up and drink some water?"

Through the fading vision, Aramis nodded, dragging up—with Athos's help—to put his back against a tree and swallow a sluice from the waterskin. His blood felt grateful for the effort but slow to respond and he stretched the moment, swallowing thrice more before bending his head down and swiping at his chin. "What happened?"

When he looked up, Athos graced him with a dark and obvious head-tilt, tugging pointedly at the cordage on his wrist.

"What did I do?" Aramis clarified, hating the blush of heat that bunched through his muscles. For the first time, he noticed his feet, marked and bruised—the left wrapped in cloth that pinched below the arch. "Assuming we did not have the ingredients for a proper friquassee?"

"You took umbrage with the foliage. Defended our camp and defeated a leaf."

Aramis breathed and frowned.

_Here—The Bandersnatch lies dead, Aramis. _

Wincing, he stared at Athos's face. _Is it really dead? —Why, then, does it thriver?_ Lowering his chin, he shivered, trying to make the memory thrive, but it vanished nearly before it appeared.

A dark mass crawled forward to replace it, crowding his mind and rising out of the woods without fear.

Scanning their bright surroundings, Aramis marked the shapes of Porthos and d'Artagnan in the distance. His heart tripped and settled when he saw them and he flinched for his reaction, boring knuckles back into his eyes.

Seconds later, Athos's hand folded over his wrist to pull it away, thumb rubbing gently over the bone.

"I'm all right," said Aramis.

"So am I."

Aramis blinked at that, locking eyes with Athos openly. The unsettled weight in his chest rolled and he felt the odd desire to hold his breath.

Athos didn't let go of him, though his gaze fell distant for a moment, turning towards what could be made out of Porthos and d'Artagnan as they cared for the horses, far towards the water. "We all have demons, Aramis." He squeezed his wrist. "You know that more than most." Then, looking back, watching Aramis's eyes—"We've seen more of them this year, perhaps. Still, they haven't taken us."

Aramis released the fire from his lungs slowly, uncertain of how to account for the sudden prickling at his neck.

He prized these moments when he and Athos would speak in honest turns as much as he hated them.

Darkness, by nature, could be undefined, and words could not always cull foolishness, nor cast demons into silence. The stone in his chest had no name he could recall, and there were some things they could not protect each other from, no matter what they wished.

Just the same, leaving his wrist to Athos's keeping, Aramis felt his gaze lower, finding the gap in Athos's collar and the absent space where he used to wear her locket. "You've truly let her go?"

Athos stared a moment more then looked away, briefly—his glance over the depleted wine marking only a fraction of his attention, but enough. "More than I had, I believe." A bird fluttered through the trees and the tentative interruption of focus made Athos's eyes seem that much bluer when they came back, curious and sincere. "Do you ask for more than that?"

"No." Aramis shook his head thickly, because he didn't, and desiring mercy for another was something else altogether.

Athos nodded, then seemed to consider, a small tilt to his head. "Savoy?"

Again, Aramis shook his head.

Athos cast a glance skyward. "Savoy?" he repeated.

Groaning a breath through his heavy body, Aramis sighed and dragged a knee up, resting an elbow on top of it and scraping a hand through his hair. "You are especially persistent today." He tangled his fingers and left them there.

"It's been some time since you've done this."

The thing in Aramis's chest tottered. _It was not Savoy._ He swallowed, losing ground. "I don't remember what I… Did I talk about Savoy?"

"Perhaps."

Aramis tossed back a glare. His skin was itching suddenly, still heavy, but wanting to move. The empty space in his memory thrummed with a vorpal, quilent, energy, and he closed his eyes to quiet the blur between his ears. He could not find where his mind had been and when the heat stayed prickling at his neck, he tugged more stringently against his scalp. "I don't know why, Athos. I've always told you, and Porthos—I don't know why I do it. I've never known. What did I say?"

"Something about warthers gwallowing," answered Porthos.

Aramis flung his eyes open, discomfited for not having heard his approach.

"No—gapering, wasn't it?" said d'Artagnan. "The warther gapered."

"The Bandersnatch gapered. The warther gwallowed." Porthos smiled until he dimpled, giving Aramis a wink.

Inexplicably, Aramis felt his lungs grow bright.

"The Bandersnatch clapped," Athos refuted with dry superiority. Then shrugged in concession. "And gapered."

"Uh huh," said Porthos.

Athos returned the head nod. "I was closer to it than you." His eyes were lighter when they met back up with Aramis's, his worry softer as he patted at his shoulder. "I think you need more sleep," he said.

"Not until he's listened to the recounting of his final triumph." Porthos raised a finger, smiling down at Aramis again. "It was a frabjous moment."

"Trave," added d'Artagnan solemnly. "Trave and brary."

"Trave," Porthos agreed after a moment of mock consideration and serious nodding. "Trave and brary was the frabious moment."

Aramis laughed.

"So trave and brary was the frabious moment, trilorious we were, in all our joy."

D'Artagnan slung a satchel down and dropped himself against a neighboring tree, prodding Aramis's ankle with his toe. "Until the hero went limp as a sack of rocks and refused to even flutter his eyelids for the rest of the night."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't make a habit out of it."

"I'll do my very best."

Seconds later, Porthos's hand alighted on Aramis's shoulder, crouching across from Athos. "I think we'd all appreciate that—d'Artagnan was very disconcerted."

Aramis eyed him and d'Artagnan shrugged. "It was disconcerting." His hands were laced across his stomach, casually, with one fluttering, telling the tale of his vexation.

Porthos squeezed Aramis's shoulder, drawing his attention back. "Better?" he asked, watching his face.

It didn't take much, and Aramis nodded, easier for the teasing. "I am sorry for worrying you."

Porthos traded a glance with Athos. "You've worried me before. I'm sure you'll worry me again." He shrugged and his smile gentled. "Now, what do you think? Sleep more?"

This time Aramis shook his head. The heavy thickness through his skin was abating. The sting behind his eyes dim enough to blink away. "I'd prefer food." He sighed. "Maybe a walk."

"No walking," said Porthos, flicking his ear. "But I'll let you cook."

"Bring me a rabbit—I'll make friquassee."

Athos laughed and Aramis looked towards him. Somewhere in his mind's eye he saw Athos again, poised calmly before a slew of unknown shadows, sword lifted and ready, taking up for his defense. It did something to the stone in his chest, and he narrowed his eyes, trying to define what it was.

Patting his leg and reaching forward, Athos untied the dangling lead from Aramis's wrist, and stood. "Until next you sleep," he announced archly, looping the rope into a coil with a mocking smile and a warning bow.

Aramis bumped his head against the tree and grimaced. "Suppose I strangle you with it in the middle of the night?"

"A risk I'll take over the alternative," Athos parried flippantly, but paused long enough to drop a hand onto his hair, mussing the strands on his way to his rucksack. Adding in a voice lowered just enough to be serious, "Until next the demast finds us, I'd have you safe."

Following with his eyes, Aramis watched him as he packed away the coil and reached for his sword belt, hanging on the adjacent tree.

_You as well_, he thought. _You as well._

My beamish brother. My frabjous friend.

* * *

_The End_

* * *

I don't think the viewpoint switch for the epilog should have thrown anyone here, but let me know.


End file.
